


and blow the dry leaves from the tree

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anniversary, Bittersweet, Cooking, Developing Friendships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, like... sad but fluffy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-28 23:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30147159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: “You’ve never made pancakes?”“I’m an alchemist, how hard can it be?”(On a cold Nicodranas morning, Yasha makes an unanticipated friend.)
Relationships: Yasha/Zuala (Critical Role), Yeza Brenatto & Yasha
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63





	and blow the dry leaves from the tree

**Author's Note:**

> this fic isn't very timeline-specific; i wrote most of it before the beauyasha date, and while there are a couple background mentions of them it isn't enough of a point in this story to use the tag. anyway, grab tissues or your nearest pancakes recipe with this one in my opinion.

On the coldest morning of the year, Yasha finds herself in one of the many markets of Nicodranas. 

She knows it’s the coldest morning of the year because Marion mentioned it over an early cup of tea, just as Yasha was leaving the rooms that are always so generously provided. The other woman had given her a gentle smile and promised to tell her companions where she was going—vanishing in the night is ever a concern for the Mighty Nein—and there’d been an understanding look in her eyes that Yasha isn’t particularly interested in facing on a  _ good  _ day, let alone. Well.

She breathes in the damp air, feels fog curling over her skin. The market is just waking up, goods coming in from dozens of ships. It’s too early and too cold for anyone to do much more than glower into their various cups of tea and coffee. Even the sound of bells from the harbor seems muted. 

Yasha has slept in the alleys of Zadash and on the plains of Xhorhas. She’s woken up with ice in her hair, some mornings. Nicodranas winters are mild in comparison.

She dreamed last night of Zuala. It was mundane, the two of them on a hunt just after they’d gotten together. She’d said something, words clumsy and confident, and Zuala had laughed. There had been no chains, no thunder, no talk of anchors. Only a dream.

There was snow on the ground, the day Zuala died.

The breeze is soft against Yasha’s hair. There are no stormclouds in the Nicodranas sky.

This morning her heart is sea-glass smooth, the ragged edges of it worn soft by time. Grief is not a friend, it is a feeling.

\---

Yeza Brenatto is getting groceries when they bump into each other. He gets extra, Yasha knows, when the Mighty Nein are in town. They invariably end up crowded into the Brenatto home at least once for a meal, talking and laughing and telling Luc lightly edited stories before Veth banishes them back to the Chateau. 

She hopes he doesn’t mind her intruding on his shopping. She tells him as much.

“I was just walking here. I don’t mean to bother you.”

Yeza smiles and shakes his head, passes her a bag of oranges to carry. “Only surprised to see you up so early—I know you all need rest.”

The oranges are bright against the gray of the morning. Yasha takes extra care not to squeeze too hard, cradles the fruit like a precious thing. Yeza hums and lets her trail in his wake, has her carry more packages from the butcher and the grocer and the baker. They all know him, call out greetings and ask after his family, and Yasha wonders if she could have a life like this, a life where people know your name and know what you’re looking for before you approach a stall. She wonders if Zuala—no. 

Zuala is not often so present in her thoughts, but today is different. The coldest day of the year.

The sun is struggling to burn some of the clouds away, by the time they start the walk back to the Brenatto home. 

“So, what do you want for breakfast?” Yeza asks, after she promises  _ no, really, you don’t need to carry anything, I’ve got it.  _

“What?”

“Well, you’re helping me with the shopping,” he says, like it’s this easy, “the least I can do is make sure you’re fed. Veth will eat anything, and Luc’s having oranges.”

“Oh.” Yasha thinks for a moment, because Yeza hasn’t bought any bugs or flowers and because she’s had mainly bacon for breakfast for the last three days. It’s Beau’s favorite, and Yasha... it’s not that she indulges her, but if it takes something that simple to bring a smile to the monk’s face she’s hardly going to ask for something  _ different.  _

Zuala’s favorite meal was hot potatoes, cooked in the embers of the bonfire. Blisteringly hot to hold and inevitably burning her fingers every time she broke one open, eager to get at the fluffy insides. Hot potatoes and salt, when it was handy. She would laugh at the trails of steam, and if they were alone Yasha would kiss her fingertips.

“I like... pancakes?” she offers, hoping that’s something people eat for breakfast.

Yeza nods, satisfied, which is how Yasha finds herself sitting in the corner of the kitchen, whisking together flour and sugar and baking powder.

\---

“You’ve never made pancakes?”

“I’m an alchemist, how hard can it be?” Yeza says, returning to the recipe card that sits on the counter. “Miss Bobsnopper next door gave me these recipes when we moved in, said they’re all well-tested.”

There’s a very quiet handful of seconds where Yeza pours the milk. Yasha holds her breath, not wanting to make him spill the incredibly full measuring cup. The surface tension holds  _ just  _ long enough for him to add it to the butter and egg.

They both exhale at the same time, and he meets her eyes before they both start laughing.

The kitchen is warm, fire built up in the stove, and the light is warm and yellow from the lamp that hangs from the ceiling. Yeza scrubs at his eyes with the hand that isn’t mixing, as relaxed and happy as she’s ever seen him.

“Like it was  _ blackpowder  _ or something,” he chuckles. 

Yasha smiles. A little small, but she feels it. “What’s next?”

He sets the bowl of liquid on the counter next to her, and Yasha scoots it a little bit away from the edge. Picking up the recipe card, Yeza frowns.

“It just says ‘mix.’”

“So... we stir it together?”

“Well, it also says ‘don’t overmix,’ so, I guess?”

Yasha frowns as well. “How do we know how much mixing to do, then?”

“Honestly? No idea. If it doesn’t work, we feed them to the dog.”

Yasha carefully scrapes the flour mixture into the other bowl and Yeza glares at the batter like he can will it to stay mixed-but-not-overmixed.

\---

“Cold morning,” he offers, as the first pancake sits in the hot pan. “Not as cold as Felderwin, but pretty cold for people around here.”

Yasha carefully cuts an orange and tries not to watch the pancake too much. You have to give things time to cook, she knows. There’s some kind of saying about not watching things.

“Where I grew up, it was cold most of the time. In Xhorhas, I mean.” Carefully, carefully, she slices through the peel. It makes her hands smell like summer, sharp and sweet and a little sour. “I was dreaming—” she cuts herself off. 

Yeza doesn’t turn away from the stove, barely reacts beyond tilting his head. The kitchen is warm and smells of oranges and the first hint of pancakes, and it’s a small enough space that they’ve knocked elbows several times. He waits, patient, and Yasha wonders if Veth learned this kind of listening from him or if he learned it from her. They both have a way of keeping their thoughts to themselves, when they’re important ones.

She’s seen Veth break through the reserve a few times only, when it means asking pointed questions or saying heavy things about the group. Most opinions, she shares very freely—but heavier thoughts require their own time, or the right set of circumstances. A little like the cooking thing, maybe.

She has never had a conversation with Yeza like this, alone in a room. She has never been invited to make pancakes with someone else, never been asked to make sure the fruit is cut. She worries, there are conversational rules that she sometimes doesn’t recognize, and she hopes she hasn’t offended him.

Still, he waits. Pokes a little at the edge of the pancake, which oozes and gets a little misshapen. 

“It’s my anniversary,” she says, and her heart aches in a way that has become far too familiar. Even with time, even with deity-induced revelations, even with dreams and stories and pressed flowers, it aches.

“I didn’t know you were married,” she can hear him frowning at the pan. He turns, at her eye-level as long as she stays sitting, and meets her gaze. She sees the understanding in his face. “I’m sorry, Yasha.”

The knife slips; she nicks her thumb and it stings.

The wound is tiny but she hisses anyway, accepting a rag he brings her and wrapping it around her hand. A reaction like this in the tribe would’ve made her an object of derision; to complain about something so small was an unacceptable weakness. Well, Yasha did a lot of unacceptable things, it turns out.

Yeza makes a sympathetic noise and fetches her a bandage next. Then he puts her on pancake-watching duty and they trade off messily flipping puddles of batter. Nothing in the stack ends up particularly circular or uniformly golden, but they hold together anyway.

\---

The pancakes are a little tough, a little bland. Through some serious investigation (also known as: rereading the recipe) they find they have forgotten salt. And despite many glares at the batter in the bowl, Yasha suspects they overmixed it.

Still, they’re pretty tasty. Syrup is nowhere to be found in the Brenatto kitchen—Yeza mutters something about the improbable difficulties cleaning it up presents—but they slather the pancakes in butter and jam and find that the occasional burned bit and crispy edge are perfectly good. And between the two of them they demolish the sliced oranges as well, and Yeza makes sure there’s warming, spiced tea to be had.

And she doesn’t have to explain anything at all, because Yeza lets it lie.

Outside, it’s the coldest morning of the year. In the kitchen, in comfortable company, Yasha doesn’t feel like it.

**Author's Note:**

> title for this fic is from a Samuel Taylor Coleridge fragment (Come, come thou bleak December wind).  
> will i ever write about grief without also writing about food? likely not! but it is about taking care of each other. yasha and yeza could be good friends if they had the opportunity, i think.  
> tough anniversaries happen to all of us; sometimes it feels like there's always one around the next corner. i hope we all have someone to make pancakes with.  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think - i hope this story resonates in a little way with people. it's certainly done so for me.


End file.
